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Yup. I tried that for years. That ship has sailed.
People choose a party, not a race, gender, etc. Party is also a reflection of policies people support. You can't separate policy from party affiliation. At the end of the day, running with a party means funding for the campaign will come from that party. They will fall in line when needed.
I agree with this strongly. I wish we had open primaries. That being said, an open primary didn't keep Diehl from getting the nod in MA or help moderates like Beth Lindstrom or Dan Winslow when they ran for US Senate. Instead, we got Diehl and Gabriel Gomez respectively. I literally heard Winslow get booed in a small G&A for supporting transgender rights. That might have been the last straw for me before I quit my ward committee and unenrolled.
I have serious doubts Erin Stewart could win a closed primary here if she were up against a hard right candidate. Baker didn't have any real challenges, but maybe behind the scenes, the party big-wigs can clear the way for her like they did for Baker in MA. Either way, it doesn't impact 2022.
Maybe a runoff system would work better. If no candidates get 50%, then the top two face off against each other. We seem to have a string of elections in which there is a large number of candidates, and the winner gets around 25% of the vote. This allows a relatively small minority that coalesces around a particular candidate to pick the candidate and limit the general election choices of the entire voting population. In its own way, this situation is anti-democratic in itself, since it seems to limit good choices for the general election voters and allows a minority to exercise a stranglehold over those choices.
Concern about the influence of big tech in our lives is certainly a bipartisan concern. The implications for privacy and freedom of speech are singificant. I also worry about echo chambers that radicalize people on both sides of the political spectrum. Other issues that need to be looked at are cyberterrorism, black markets, and the easy access to pornography.
This is the biggest issue that few are talking about. I am glad you identified it.
I think it's really important to reach beyond the deranged intellectual rut that both parties have created and would like to keep us in so they can control us. We face epoch-changing issues the magnitude of which we have not dealt with in 70 or 80 years. We need to put our heads together and deal with them, rather than fighting over race/ethnicity/history/Trump. We need to come to terms with our past, realize that our American dream is a work in progress, and focus on a better future, rather than tearing ourselves apart about a past that we cannot change. We are becoming a laughingstock because of our inability to successfully cope with our problems.
We face massive social issues that are dragging us down, and a huge structural deficit that will lead us to bankruptcy if we don't get a grip. We have been in a gilded age in which wealth is increasingly concentrated in a relatively small number of people, with many others suffering. Nothing proposed so far comes close to addressing this problem credibly. People are losing faith in capitalism because it has been so poorly regulated, we have allowed harmful monopolies to develop, and as a result, the system isn't working for a large number of people. When you look at the titans of our gilded age, they don't even produce anything of value. Facebook, Google, etc. don't produce anything, and whether they have added to our quality of life is highly arguable. It really says something that the titans of the last gilded age at least produced something tangible of value, while today's titans have given us twerking, trashy "influencers" like the Kardashians, and loss of control over our own privacy and information, which is being sold to make the titans even richer.
It will take the best brains we have to find a way out of this blind alley, and we keep electing morons like what we have in office now. It's not "ableism" to expect that the people we hire to lead us are actually capable of doing it.
We have fared very badly under leadership by the boomer generation, and unfortunately it seems that many coming up behind them are ever worse. It's a depressing situation.
Right - and that’s my point. If everyone stopped looking at party over person, we’d be much better off.
At risk of going off topic, I always put the person over party but my party, the Republican Party, has clearly put party and power over democracy, the US Constitution and integrity. That is unforgivable. It has made me truly hate the party and what it stands for. That is why the party lost my vote this election. Jay
At risk of going off topic, I always put the person over party but my party, the Republican Party, has clearly put party and power over democracy, the US Constitution and integrity. That is unforgivable. It has made me truly hate the party and what it stands for. That is why the party lost my vote this election. Jay
(I mean all of the following in the nicest way possible!)
Jay, I know you are smarter than this, because your posts are usually quite rational and I agree with almost all of them.
But, the bolded sentence is nothing short of hypocrisy, because it cannot be true. And, if it were true, then you should be able to differentiate between an extremist Republican and a normal Republican, while not lumping them together, and voting accordingly. Your stance, also, ignores the extremists in the Democratic Party, of which there are just as many as in the Republican Party.
Each opposition party, of the last twenty years, has claimed that the president is illegitimate in some way. Some in the Democratic Party spent eight years claiming George Bush was an illegitimate president because of hanging chads. Some in the Republican Party spent eight years claiming Barack Obama was an illegitimate president due to 'birtherism'. Some in the Democratic Party spent four years claiming Donald Trump was an illegitimate president due to disproven Russian collusion. And, some in the Republican Party have spent the last two years claiming Joe Biden is an illegitimate president due to "fraudulent" mail-in ballots. That does not make it right, but that is the reality of the situation.
To tie this back to Connecticut to stay on the topic of the thread, if Connecticut Republicans are talking about the issues that matter most to you, and Connecticut Democrats are not, why would you not vote for Connecticut Republicans? And, if your justification is the national party and its problems, then the reality is that the issues you claim to care about actually do not matter much, to you. That may be harsh, but it is the truth.
(I mean all of the following in the nicest way possible!)
Jay, I know you are smarter than this, because your posts are usually quite rational and I agree with almost all of them.
But, the bolded sentence is nothing short of hypocrisy, because it cannot be true. And, if it were true, then you should be able to differentiate between an extremist Republican and a normal Republican, while not lumping them together, and voting accordingly. Your stance, also, ignores the extremists in the Democratic Party, of which there are just as many as in the Republican Party.
Each opposition party, of the last twenty years, has claimed that the president is illegitimate in some way. Some in the Democratic Party spent eight years claiming George Bush was an illegitimate president because of hanging chads. Some in the Republican Party spent eight years claiming Barack Obama was an illegitimate president due to 'birtherism'. Some in the Democratic Party spent four years claiming Donald Trump was an illegitimate president due to disproven Russian collusion. And, some in the Republican Party have spent the last two years claiming Joe Biden is an illegitimate president due to "fraudulent" mail-in ballots. That does not make it right, but that is the reality of the situation.
To tie this back to Connecticut to stay on the topic of the thread, if Connecticut Republicans are talking about the issues that matter most to you, and Connecticut Democrats are not, why would you not vote for Connecticut Republicans? And, if your justification is the national party and its problems, then the reality is that the issues you claim to care about actually do not matter much, to you. That may be harsh, but it is the truth.
(I mean all of the following in the nicest way possible!)
Jay, I know you are smarter than this, because your posts are usually quite rational and I agree with almost all of them.
But, the bolded sentence is nothing short of hypocrisy, because it cannot be true. And, if it were true, then you should be able to differentiate between an extremist Republican and a normal Republican, while not lumping them together, and voting accordingly. Your stance, also, ignores the extremists in the Democratic Party, of which there are just as many as in the Republican Party.
Each opposition party, of the last twenty years, has claimed that the president is illegitimate in some way. Some in the Democratic Party spent eight years claiming George Bush was an illegitimate president because of hanging chads. Some in the Republican Party spent eight years claiming Barack Obama was an illegitimate president due to 'birtherism'. Some in the Democratic Party spent four years claiming Donald Trump was an illegitimate president due to disproven Russian collusion. And, some in the Republican Party have spent the last two years claiming Joe Biden is an illegitimate president due to "fraudulent" mail-in ballots. That does not make it right, but that is the reality of the situation.
To tie this back to Connecticut to stay on the topic of the thread, if Connecticut Republicans are talking about the issues that matter most to you, and Connecticut Democrats are not, why would you not vote for Connecticut Republicans? And, if your justification is the national party and its problems, then the reality is that the issues you claim to care about actually do not matter much, to you. That may be harsh, but it is the truth.
Spot on.
What you wrote about is the difference between true leaders of substance and attention seekers. Extremists, left and right, are the noise who get attention. They are not the true core party. That is as true of the left as the right wing.
If not for Trump this lie about fraud doesn't move beyond the fringe. The Republican party is broken. There's no equivalency between this and "hanging chads." There's no equivalency between this and support for defunding the police.
It's a sad state of affairs for those who are truly sane Republicans-- and I think there are more here in Connecticut than in most other places-- however, the sane are not steering the ship in the Republican Party. I don't see AOC in an important leadership position. I don't see her advancing to the Senate-- let alone the Presidency.
If not for Trump this lie about fraud doesn't move beyond the fringe. The Republican party is broken. There's no equivalency between this and "hanging chads." There's no equivalency between this and support for defunding the police.
It's a sad state of affairs for those who are truly sane Republicans-- and I think there are more here in Connecticut than in most other places-- however, the sane are not steering the ship in the Republican Party. I don't see AOC in an important leadership position. I don't see her advancing to the Senate-- let alone the Presidency.
There is no equivalency here.
I keep seeing you post buzz phrases like “false equivalency” and “strawman argument”, but you don’t seem to appropriately reply with anything of substance other than, essentially, “the Republican Party is extreme”, “Trump!”, “broken!”. Sort of loses credibility, especially when some posters here fail to recognize how horrifically extreme the Democratic Party has gone, as well.
I keep seeing you post buzz phrases like “false equivalency” and “strawman argument”, but you don’t seem to appropriately reply with anything of substance other than, essentially, “the Republican Party is extreme”, “Trump!”, “broken!”. Sort of loses credibility, especially when some posters here fail to recognize how horrifically extreme the Democratic Party has gone, as well.
You seem to repeat the same tired arguments about Connecticut shifting hard left, repeating the same half-truths and non-evidence to support your singular line of argumentation.
Phrases like "false equivalency" and "strawman argument" are more polite than calling people liars. You're welcome to ignore me and cease responding since you don't believe my arguments are substantive. In fact, I wish you would.
You seem to repeat the same tired arguments about Connecticut shifting hard left, repeating the same half-truths and non-evidence to support your singular line of argumentation.
Phrases like "false equivalency" and "strawman argument" are more polite than calling people liars. You're welcome to ignore me and cease responding since you don't believe my arguments are substantive. In fact, I wish you would.
You can’t take someone’s opinion and call them a liar for it. I’ve given hard evidence on why/how I feel CT has gone hard left, three of which were extreme left wing bills supported by the governor. Your party and its followers continue to try and gaslight the rest of us by saying what’s happening, isn’t. It very much is if you stray from your party loyalty and look at the facts.
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